The book undone

de Karla Nielsen, Sarah Arkebauer

In 2001, fifteen years in to its operation, Granary Books published When Will the Book Be Done?, an illustrated, annotated catalog of their books. The title refers to an early joke between Steve Clay and printer/publisher Ruth Lingen, who included the question clipped from a magazine headline when delivering recently completed copies of Comeundone by Henrik Drescher to Clay. That clipping adorns the Granary offices to this day. This 2015 exhibition reviews that halfway point and reaches back to the press's origins in Minnesota in the mid-1980s. It then follows Granary's work to the present. This exhibition differs from previous exhibitions of the press's work by including material from the press's archive held by the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.